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Department OfMedicine, Health, and Society

Aimi Hamraie

Associate Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society

Aimi Hamraie (they/them) is Associate Professor of Medicine, Health, & Society and American Studies at Vanderbilt University, and director of the Critical Design Lab. Trained as a feminist scholar, Hamraie’s interdisciplinary research spans critical disability studies, science and technology studies, critical design and urbanism, critical race theory, and the environmental humanities. They are author of Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) and host of the Contra* podcast on disability and design. With Kelly Fritsch, Mara Mills, and David Serlin, Hamraie co-edited a special issue of Catalyst: feminism theory technoscience on “Crip Technoscience.” Hamraie’s research is funded by the Social Science Research Council, the Smithsonian Institution, the Mellon Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts, and the National Humanities Alliance. They are quoted by the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, National Public Radio, the History Channel, the Huffington Post, Art News, and others.

Specializations

  • Critical disability studies
  • Crip and feminist technoscience
  • Design and architecture
  • Environmental humanities

Representative Publications

Hamraie, Aimi. Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

Hamraie, Aimi. “Crip Mobility Justice: Ableism and Active Transportation Debates,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (January 2021), https://www.ijurr.org/spotlight-on/disabling-city/crip-mobility-justice/.

Hamraie, Aimi. “Alterlivability: speculative fiction, urban design and the good life in Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing and City of Refuge.” Environmental Humanities 12.2 (November 2020). https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-8623197

Hamraie, Aimi, and Kelly Fritsch. “Crip Technoscience Manifesto.” Catalyst: feminist theory technoscience. 5.1 (2019): https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/29607/24772.

Hamraie, Aimi. “Mapping Access: digital humanities, disability justice, and socio-spatial practice,” American Quarterly 70.3 (2018): 455-482. doi:10.1353/aq.2018.0031.

Hamraie, Aimi. “Enlivened City: Inclusive Design, Biopolitics, and the Philosophy of Liveability,” Built Environments 44.1 (2018): 77-104. doi:https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.44.1.77

Hamraie, Aimi. “Universal Design and the Problem of Post-Disability Ideology,” Design and Culture 8.3 (2016): 285-309. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2016.1218714.